School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bowland High?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Bowland High as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 133 and 138 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Lancashire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.04

first choices for every place available

138 first preferences for 133 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bowland High

There is no published appeal success rate for Bowland High, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Lancashire as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Lancashire, 28.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 768 of 2,706 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Lancashire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Lancashire ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Bowland High turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Bowland High, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.26 per place 136 first choices 108 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 122 first choices 110 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 138 first choices 113 places 2018/19 1.34 per place 153 first choices 114 places 2019/20 1.48 per place 161 first choices 109 places 2020/21 1.42 per place 156 first choices 110 places 2021/22 1.31 per place 143 first choices 109 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 95 first choices 101 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 143 first choices 137 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 157 first choices 140 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 153 first choices 134 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 138 first choices 133 places
First preferences per place at Bowland High. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 138 first preferences for 133 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bowland High, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 108 136 107 1.26
2016/17 110 122 107 1.11
2017/18 113 138 111 1.22
2018/19 114 153 112 1.34
2019/20 109 161 105 1.48
2020/21 110 156 109 1.42
2021/22 109 143 105 1.31
2022/23 101 95 95 0.94
2023/24 137 143 136 1.04
2024/25 140 157 133 1.12
2025/26 134 153 130 1.14
2026/27 133 138 130 1.04

Places offered

133

in 2026/27

Named first choice

138

413 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.2%

130 of 138

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 133 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

700

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

612

87.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

88

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Bowland High has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Bowland High reported 88 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.4% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bowland High from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 525 places 560 on roll 2012/13 525 places 561 on roll 2013/14 525 places 559 on roll 2014/15 525 places 552 on roll 2015/16 525 places 559 on roll 2016/17 525 places 559 on roll 2017/18 525 places 568 on roll 2018/19 525 places 568 on roll 2020/21 525 places 558 on roll 2021/22 525 places 559 on roll 2022/23 525 places 563 on roll 2023/24 576 places 586 on roll 2024/25 700 places 612 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode BB7 4QS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136997).

Other contested secondary schools in Lancashire

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.